A cartoon on politicians in a national daily last week had this caption: “As it is, you look quite honest; now let’s see how you look when you tell a lie”!

A cartoon on politicians in a national daily last week had this caption: “As it is, you look quite honest; now let’s see how you look when you tell a lie”!

This set me thinking why honesty has become a rare trait these days!

During our school days, we were trained to believe that honesty is the best policy. Gandhi lived and died for truth.

Yoko Ono, peace activist and present day ‘Gandhian’, too says so, “Each time we don’t say what we wanna say, we are dying.”

Honesty is the best virtue that a human being can possess. An honest man necessarily possesses all other human qualities of head and heart because he is at a higher and evolved level.

His honesty makes him capable of love, compassion, being helpful and considerate.

That is because, as James E. Faust says, “Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.”

It is likely that in today’s complex and intriguing world, one may have to suffer for being honest. Never mind, let it be. You will enjoy the suffering and it will help you understand humanity better.

Gandhi had to go through the process of suffering the whole of his life; but he made a stepping-stone of it for success.

Nobody suffered more than him in recent times for being honest and truthful; and he had the conviction of his faith that he will ultimately conquer. His ‘My Experiments with Truth’ is a truthful tale.

Oscar Wilde brings this very point home, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken in.”

That shows the power of being honest is a greater power than any other, and leads one to peace of mind and lasting happiness.

If you have read Charles Dickens, most of his novels like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and Bleak House are a tale of suffering and honesty that gives one the joy of living because there is hope, aspiration and the sight of a brave new world!